I’ve been struggling with a project at home for some time, ripping a bunch of CD-R’s to MP3. Some of the discs simply could not be read by any of the combi-DVD/CD drives I have. The only player that worked at all is a dedicated CD reader that came with the Compaq computer I bought on October 25, 2001 — the day that Windows XP was released. But some songs wouldn’t finish ripping, and even if they did finish it could take hours, and even with error correction enabled on the drive the results were awful, as heard on the audio player’s first track. The song, by Bonnie Guitar, was #27 on the Billboard music charts the week of June 24, 1957. The second track on the player has a clean rip of the song from the CD-R.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/1st+rip.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/2nd+rip.mp3|titles=Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – bad rip,Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – good rip]You would think the first recording was taken from a badly scratched record, and the second from a CD, but they both came from the same CD-R. What made the difference? An amazingly nimble 10-year-old TEAC CD210-PU USB CD-ROM reader I got hold of that sails through the same discs that gave five other units a fit.
That same week in 1957, another recording of the song, done by Gale Storm, was #7 on the Billboard chart, and it makes for an interesting comparison to Bonnie’s version. I hear a definite Elvis influence here.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/GStorm.mp3|titles=Gale Storm: Dark Moon]